From Heartbreak to Zig: How Andrew Kelley Built a Safer C Alternative

In 2015, programmer Andrew Kelley suffered a breakup and, feeling depressed, decided to channel his frustration into creating a new programming language. This led to the birth of Zig.

Ten years later, Zig has formed a foundation, built an active Discord community and a growing GitHub ecosystem, and is widely regarded as a modern, safer, and more efficient replacement for C.

Why target C

Andrew’s experience developing a digital audio workstation exposed many pitfalls of C, such as unsafe integer conversions, manual memory allocation, lack of bounds checking, and a defensive, often hostile community that discourages newcomers.

Zig's key features

Zig provides safety checks for array bounds, null pointers, and integer overflow.

Memory allocation is transparent and controllable.

There are no hidden control‑flow constructs.

Static linking reduces external dependencies and enables clean cross‑platform releases.

Code can be executed at compile time.

Compile‑time execution example

fn fib(n: u32) u32 {
    return if (n < 2) n else fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2);
}
var fib_10 = comptime fib(10);

The comptime keyword causes the compiler to evaluate the function during compilation, so the resulting executable contains the constant value 55 for fib_10, with no runtime calls.

Community and funding

Andrew founded the non‑profit Zig Foundation, which receives roughly $400 k in annual donations. He draws a modest salary of $108 k, while the board allocates $159 k for the foundation’s operations.

After quitting his full‑time job and relying on Patreon donations, Andrew found that full‑time focus accelerated development, increased community trust, attracted more donations, and ultimately improved his financial situation.

Adoption by other projects

Bun – a JavaScript/TypeScript runtime and package manager.

TigerBeetle – a transactional database for financial applications.

Uber – infrastructure and toolchain components.

Although Zig is still far from supplanting C entirely, it has become a vibrant language with a growing ecosystem.

Beyond the technical achievements, Andrew’s story illustrates that open‑source development is as much a lifestyle and set of values as it is a technical endeavor.